y must have brought him a bitter disappointment, while at
the same time the careless and indiscreet remark of an American official
to certain Germans--"We don't want the Philippines; why don't you take
them?"--may well have given him a feeling that perhaps the question was
still open.

Under such circumstances, with Europe none too well-disposed and the
Kaiser watching events with a jealous eye, it was very important to
the United States not to be without a friend. In England sympathy for
America ran strong and deep. The British Government was somewhat in
alarm over the political solitude in which Great Britain found herself,
even though its head, Lord Salisbury, described the position as one of
"splendid isolation." The unexpected reaction of friendliness on the
part of Great Britain which had followed the Venezuela affair continued
to augment, and relations between the two countries were kept smooth by
the new American Ambassador, John Hay, whom Queen Victoria described
as "the most interesting of all the ambassadors I have known."
More important still, in Great Britain alone was there a public who
appreciated the real sentiment of humanity underlying the entrance of
the United States into the war with Spain; and this public actually had
some weight in politics. The people of both Great Britain and the United
States were easily moved to respond with money and personal service
to the cry of suffering anywhere in the world. Just before the Spanish
American War, Gladstone had made his last great campaign protesting
against the new massacres in Armenia; and in the United States the
Republican platform of 1896 had declared that "the massacres in Armenia
have aroused the deep sympathy and just indignation of the American
people, and we believe that the United States should exercise all the
influence it can properly exert to bring these atrocities to an end."

John Hay wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge, of the Senate Committee on Foreign
Affairs, April 5, 1898, as follows: "For the first time in my life
I find the drawing-room sentiment altogether with us. If we wanted
it--which, of course, we do not--we could have the practical assistance
of the British Navy--on the do ut des principle, naturally." On the 25th
of May he added: "It is a moment of immense importance, not only for
the present, but for all the future. It is hardly too much to say the
interests of civilization are bound up in the direction the relations of
England and